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Liquidity as an investment style : evidence from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange

Theart, Lomari (2014-03)

Thesis (MComm)--Stellenbosch University, 2014.

Thesis

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Individual and institutional investors alike are continuously searching for investment styles and strategies that can yield enhanced risk-adjusted portfolio returns. In this regard, a number of investment styles have emerged in empirical analysis as explanatory factors of portfolio return. These include size (the rationale that small stocks outperform large stocks), value (high book-to-market ratio stocks outperform low book-to-market ratio stocks) and momentum (stocks currently outperforming will continue to do so).
During the mid-eighties it has been proposed that liquidity (investing in low liquidity stocks relative to high liquidity stocks) is a missing investment style that can further enhance the risk-adjusted performance in the United States equity market. In the South African equity market this so-called liquidity effect, however, has remained largely unexplored. The focus of this study was therefore to determine whether the liquidity effect is prevalent in the South African equity market and whether by employing a liquidity strategy an investor could enhance risk-adjusted returns.
This study was conducted over a period of 17 years, from 1996 to 2012. As a primary objective, this study analysed liquidity as a risk factor affecting portfolio returns, first as a residual purged from the influence of the market premium, size and book-to-market (value/growth) factors, and then in the presence of these explanatory factors affecting stock returns. Next, as a secondary objective, this study explored whether incorporating a liquidity style into passive portfolio strategies yielded enhanced risk-adjusted performance relative to other pure-liquidity and liquidity-neutral passive ‘style index’ strategies. The results from this study indicated that liquidity is not a statistically significant risk factor affecting broad market returns in the South African equity market. Instead the effect of liquidity is significant in small and low liquidity portfolios only. However, the study indicated that including liquidity as a risk factor improved the Fama-French three-factor model in capturing shared variation in stock returns. Lastly, incorporating a liquidity style into passive portfolio strategies yielded weak evidence of enhanced risk-adjusted performance relative to other pure-liquidity and liquidity-neutral passive ‘style index’ strategies.
This research ultimately provided a better understanding of the return generating process of the South African equity market. It analysed previously omitted variables and gave an indication of how these factors influence returns. Furthermore, in analysing the risk- adjusted performance of liquidity-biased portfolio strategies, light was shed upon how a liquidity bias could influence portfolio returns.